Free Essay: A Lesson Before Dying: My Opinion.
Grant Wiggins, the narrator of A Lesson Before Dying, is a teacher. And education plays a key thematic role in the novel. Yet the novel’s portrayal of education is not the simple “education is good” that you might hear from a politician. In fact, in the beginning of the novel, there seems to be no evidence that education, as traditionally understood, yields any long-term results whatsoever.A Lesson Before Dying Quotes. Poverty. Chapter 1. He took the money out of hunger and plain stupidity. (1.11) Grant is telling it like it is. He admits that Jefferson did take the money. He also acknowledges that it was a result of poverty, not necessarily meanness. However, he recognizes that it was one of the stupidest things Jefferson could have done in that moment, and sealed his fate in.Lesson Before Dying Racism Essays. 1021 Words 5 Pages. Show More. Skindeep Throughout history and in literature, Black has always been portrayed as evil, whereas White has represented purity and light. These oversimplified stereotypes of something so abstract as skin color has plagued our culture with prejudice and hatred. Ernest E. Gaines, author of A Lesson Before Dying, tells the story of.
A Lesson Before Dying takes place eighty years after the abolition of slavery, but the black characters of this novel still live as third-class citizens. They live and work on a plantation. They are segregated from the white people in the town in every aspect of their lives, from bathrooms to movie theatres. The black school is given tattered books and a few measly sticks of firewood to burn.A Lesson Before Dying teaches that never give up even under a brutal system of racism, which is shown through the character of Jefferson, Grant and Miss. Emma. Jefferson, a black man who is falsely accused of murder, is compared by his defense attorney to a hog who is not even worth executing, and Jefferson begins to act like a hog rather than a man.
A Lesson Before Dying is set in rural Louisiana in the 1940’s. The setting is ripe for the racism displayed in the novel. Ernest J. Gaines weaves an intricate web of human connections, using the character growth of Grant Wiggins and Jefferson to subtly expose the effect people have on one another (Poston A1).
